As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As the capabilities of information handling systems have improved, the power requirements of information handling systems and their component information handling resources have increased. Accordingly, the amount of heat produced by such information handling resources has increased. Because the electrical properties of information handling resources may be adversely affected by the presence of heat (e.g., some information handling resources may not operate correctly outside of a particular range of temperatures), information handling systems often include cooling systems configured to cool such information handling resources.
Traditionally, information handling resources have been cooled via the impingement of air driven by one or more fans. As the density of information handling resources present in information handling systems has increased, and as information handling resources have become faster (and thus hotter), the airflow required to provide adequate cooling has increased, leading to the need for more powerful fans and/or a greater numbers of fans. This leads to yet more power consumption, larger information handling system size, and excessive noise. In addition, because fans often transfer heat to those areas proximate to the information handling system being cooled, users of such information handling systems are often required to tolerate higher-than-typical temperatures.
As an improvement over traditional fan-based cooling systems, some information handling system manufacturers have provided mechanisms to cool individual component information handling resources with liquid, such as water. However, liquid circulation units and plumbing required to provide for liquid cooling may add significant complexity to a data center. In addition, many data center operators have a tremendous concern of introducing water into a data center, for the fear that a water leak may destroy components and data within the data center.